Chapter VI: A draught of water from the spring,

An apple from the wayside tree,

A bit of bread for strengthening,

A pipe for grace and policy;

And so, by taking time, to find

A world that's mainly to one's mind;

Some health, some wit in friends a few,

Some high behaviours in their kind,

Some dispositions to be true.

FAUSTINE

She muses while the sunbeams creep

In slanting piers of light,

She muses while the shadows sleep

About the fire at night;

Hers is the vestal's waiting air,

The silence sweet and weird;

More wisdom nestles in her hair

Than crouched in Nestor's beard;

Troops of to-morrows cross her thought

In happy Junes and Mays,

And files of slow Septembers fraught

With priceless yesterdays;

And all her hours a thronging host

With visitations fill;

She gazes on each tranquil ghost

With eyes more tranquil still.

SOMETIME IT MAY BE

Sometime it may be you and I

In that deserted yard shall lie,

Where memories fade away,

Caring no more for our old dreams,

Busy with new and alien themes,

As saints and sages say.

But let our graves be side by side,

That passers-by at even-tide

May pause a moment's space:

"Ah, they were lovers who lie here!

Else why these low graves laid so near

In this forgotten place?"

WHEN ALL THE BROOKS HAVE RUN AWAY

When all the brooks have run away,

When the sea has left its place,

When the dead earth to night and day

Turns round a stony face,

Let other planets hold the strife

And burden now it bears,

The toil of ages, lifting life

Up those unnumbered stairs,

Out of that death no eye has seen

To something far and high;

But underneath the stairs, Faustine,

How melancholy lie

The broken shards and left behind,

The frustrate and unfit,

Who sought the infinite and kind,

And found the infinite.

ONE HOUR

The sun shall go darkly his way, the skies

Be lampless of stars, and the moon with sighs

Of her years complain,

And you and I in the waste shall meet

Of a downward gulf with hurrying feet,

And remember then

Only this shy, encircled place,

Only this hour's dimpled grace--

And smile again.

HEIRS OF TIME

Who grieves because the world is old,

Or cares how long it last,

If no grey threads are in our gold,

The shade our marbles cast,

We may not see it creeping near;

Time's heirs are you and I,

And freely spend each minted year

For anything 'twill buy.

WHO MAY WITH THE SHREWD HOURS STRIVE?

Who may with the shrewd Hours strive?

Too thrifty dealers they,

That with the one hand blandly give,

With the other take away,

With here and there some falling flake,

Some dust of gold, between

The hands that give and hands that take

Slipped noiseless and unseen.

Ah, comedy of bargainings,

Whose gain of years is found

A little silt of golden things

Forgotten on the ground!

LET ME NO MORE A MENDICANT

Let me no more a mendicant

Without the gate

Of the world's kingly palace wait;

Morning is spent,

The sentinels change and challenge in the tower,

Now slant the shadows eastward hour by hour.

Open the door, O Seneschal! Within

I see them sit,

The feasters, daring destiny with wit,

Casting to win

Or lose their utmost, and men hurry by

At offices of confluent energy.

Let me not here a mendicant

Without the gate

Linger from dayspring till the night is late,

And there are sent

All homeless stars to loiter in the sky,

And beggared midnight winds to wander by.

CURARE SEPULTOS

_Id cinerem aut Manis credis curare sepultos?_

"Do you think their spirits care

For their ashes and their tombs?"

Do you think they are aware,

That the tended roses are all gone with their perfumes,

That the footsteps of the mourners no longer linger

there,

Where the field flower only blooms?

They are dead. Let none remember;

Let their memories die as they;

Clear the dead leaves of November

For the careless passing footsteps of April and of May;

Be no sign of last night's saddened ember

In the flame we raise to-day.

Not that our hearts are cold,

O dead friends, who were dear to us!

Do we our lips withhold

From fallen stones and low graves piteous,

But only that death's voice is faint and old,

And life's imperious.

TO-MORROW

_Nunc vino pellite curas,_

_Cras ingens iterabimus aequor._

Now drive away your cares with wine

To-morrow on the sea we go.

To-night for us the tapers shine,

To-night the roses blow;

To-morrow shall our steps incline

Where the wild waters flow.

To-morrow! Let to-morrow be

Where all this world's to-morrows are

Where each must follow faithfully

The guiding of his star.

The moment that is given me

Is mine to make or mar.

Drink to me only with your eyes,

And I with mine will pay the debt;

Drink to my moment ere it dies

Divine and fragrant yet:

To each to-night its melodies!

To-morrow to forget!

SNOW

After the singing birds are gone

And the leaves are parched and low,

When the year is old, and the sky is wan,

Then comes the snow.

Hushed are the world's discordant notes

By the soft hand of snow.

Each flake how silently it floats;

How peaceable, how slow!

Ah, when the silver cord is loosed

And the golden bowl is broken,

And the spirit poured on the air unused,

As one has spoken,

After the last faint sob of breath

And the jar of life's outflow,

Over the sunken soul comes death,

Soft, cool, like snow.

BY THE SEA

Ave Maria by the sea,

Whose waves go on forevermore!

And we, the sheltered of the shore,

Have prayed to thee

For those in ships that journey far,

Where all day long their sails are white,

And grey and ghostly in the night

Each ship beneath its star.

Ave Maria! Be our guide.

A watchful star, a port to reach,

Ave Maria! give to each

Some eventide.

Be thou our moon of mystic light,

Across the ocean's gloom and wrath

Showing the lines of a silver path

To watchers in the night.

Ave Maria! From the sea

The constant litanies arise;

The burden of its many sighs

Goes up to thee.

Our lives make murmur and are vain

As ripples bringing tiny shells,

That the great sea behind impels,

And all its waves complain.

IN PORT TO-DAY

Now are harboured ships asleep

Beside their shadows,

Home from the wind-winnowed deep

And unscythed meadows

Of the bright green gliding sea,

From the windward gliding to the lee;

And one ship in port to-day

On the morrow

Southward bound will far away

The swift sea furrow;

Whom the loud Antarctic waits

And frozen citadels with creaking gates.

I have a home, though palmer bound

For holy lands, I pine for it;

I know its sheltering walls around

The hearth and lamp that shine for it,

The door apart;

I shall return on windward seas

By blue shores of Illyria

To find it filled with melodies

From Eden, beyond Syria.

It is your heart.

AS WE GROW OLD

_Tempora labuntur tacitisque senescimus annis._

"Time glides along and we grow old

By process of the silent years,"

More fain the busy hands to fold,

More quiet when a tale is told

Where death appears.

It is not that the feet would shrink

From that dark river, lapping, cold,

And hid with mists from brink to brink;

Only one likes to sit and think,

As one grows old.

WAYFARERS

All honest things in the world we met

With welcome, fair and free;

A little love is with us yet,

A friend, or two, or three;

Of the sun and moon and stars were glad,

Of the waters of river and sea;

We thank Thee, Lord, for the years we've had,

For the years that yet shall be.

These are our brothers, the winds of the airs,

These are our sisters, the flowers;

Be near us at evening and hear our prayers,

O God, in the late, grey hours.

THE HOUSE

Such an house I'll build and own,

When into old contentment grown

With reaping what my youth has sown.

The drooping roof be low and wide,

Curved like a seashell's inner side;

Let vines the patient pillars hide

Of that deep porch and ample shade;

There let no hurrying step invade,

Troubled or anxious or afraid.

I pray that birches very white

May stand athwart the woods at night,

Sweet and slim by late moonlight;

And I desire a beech may be

Not far away from mine and me,

Strong, pure, serene, and matronly;

An oak outspread in ample space,

Strength out of storms met face to face,

In his male girth and wide embrace.

Lest all the years go by in vain

Let the wind only and the rain

Paint my four walls with weather stain,

Nor phantom youth be ever there;

Of time's significance aware,

Time's grey insignia let them bear.

A brook before shall glide along,

And where its narrow waters throng

Make bubble music and low song.

A garden on the rearward side

Shall hold some flowers of civil pride,

And some in meekness dignified.

Within my house all men may see

How goodly four-square beams may be,

How unashamed in honesty.

There shall my day to evening creep,

Though downward, yet, as rivers sweep

By winding ways to the great deep.

SONNETS

THE HILLS

Consider the large heavenward hills, their ease,

Their genial age, their wisdom. More and more

I lift mine eyes unto the hills which bore

Of old their brunt of battle, and have peace.

These are the scars were ground across their knees

When the earth shuddered and the ice came on.

The hills have heaved and shouted and made moan

For the hot fire that bit their arteries.

Gentle and strong, old veterans of war,

Now humble with each flower and woven nest,

Friends of the sun and moon and morning star,

And fain of the mad north wind's biting jest;

My counsellors at unwritten law they are,

Teachers of lore and laughter, labour and rest.

WORDSWORTH

Not for a kindred reason thee we praise

With those, who in their minstrelsy are lords

Of elfin pipe and witchery of words,

Masters of life, who thread its tangled maze,

And on strange corners turn their curious gaze;

Nor those that delve for jewels in the hoards

Of old philosophies, of love's soft ways

Sing variously, or chaunt of clashing swords.

Rather for sympathy with the silent laws,

Which are themselves but sympathies; that the worn

Fine here a "still Saint Mary's Lake"; because

"The world is too much with us," and through thee

"Old Triton" sometimes blows on "wreathed horn"

A fitful note, clear from infinity.

THE WATER-LILY

Our boat drifts idly on the listless river

And water-lilies brush its bulging side,

In feeble wavings while the waters quiver

Like the pale sleeper's pulse before he died.

Reach me that water-lily floating near;

Its sullen roots give way with dull regret,

And now it lies across your fingers, dear,

Long, glistening in the sunlight, green and wet.

See the gold heart emerging from the dew,

Folded in petals of the purest white!

Look! through this stem in silent hours it drew

Its fragrance from deep waters out of sight,

And found among the river oozes cold,

This perfume and this whiteness and this gold.

THE THRUSH

I heard a wood thrush singing late and long

In the warm silence of the afternoon,

And drew more near to hear his secret croon

And intimate close confidence of song,

But at the noisy tread of my rude feet

The music ceased, the phantom voice was gone,"

And far away I heard him, in the sweet,

Serene recesses singing, and alone.

The law is written on the evening skies,

The wood thrush sings its beauty and despair;

Thou shalt not trespass where the loveliest lies,

Nor use the holiest place for common prayer,

And surely as God liveth, to the eyes

Of him who lifts the veil, He is not there.

THE ROMAN WAY